Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra 2014-2015 Subscription Series January 23 and 25, 2015 JAMES GAFFIGAN, CONDUCTOR GABRIELA MONTERO, PIANO MASON BATES White Lies for Lomax MAURICE RAVEL Concerto in G major for Piano and Orchestra I. Allegramente II. Adagio assai III. Presto Ms. Montero Intermission RICHARD WAGNER “Good Friday Spell” from Parsifal FELIX MENDELSSOHN Symphony No. 5 in D minor, Opus 107, “Reformation” I. Andante — Allegro con fuoco II. Allegro vivace III. Andante — IV. Choral: “Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott” (Andante con moto) — Allegro vivace — Allegro maestoso Jan. 23-25, 2015, page 1 PROGRAM NOTES BY DR. RICHARD E. RODDA MASON BATES Born 23 January 1977 in Philadelphia White Lies for Lomax (composed for piano in 2007; arranged for orchestra in 2009) PREMIERE OF WORK: Walnut Creek, California, 10 March 2009; California Symphony; Barry Jekowsky, conductor THESE PERFORMANCES MARK THE PSO PREMIERE APPROXIMATE DURATION: 7 minutes INSTRUMENTATION: piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, E-flat clarinet, two B-flat clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, piano, celesta and strings Mason Bates brings not only his own fresh talent to the concert hall but also the musical sensibilities of a new generation — he is equally at home composing “for Lincoln Center,” according to his web site (www.masonbates.com), as being the “electronica artist Masonic® who moved to the San Francisco Bay Area from New York City, where he was a lounge DJ at such venues as The Frying Pan — the floating rave ship docked off the pier near West 22nd Street.” Bates was born in Philadelphia in 1977 and started studying piano with Hope Armstrong Erb at his childhood home in Richmond, Virginia. He earned degrees in both English literature and music composition in the joint program of Columbia University and the Juilliard School, where his composition teachers included John Corigliano, David Del Tredici and Samuel Adler, and received his doctorate in composition from the University of California, Berkeley in 2008 as a student of Edmund Campion and Jorge Lidermann. Bates was Resident Composer with the California Symphony (2008-2011), Project San Francisco Artist-in-Residence with the San Francisco Symphony (2011-2012), and Composer of the Year with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra for both the 2012-2013 and 2014-2015 seasons; he began a five-year residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in September 2010. The San Francisco Symphony gave a “Beethoven & Bates” festival during its 2013-2014 season and recorded his Liquid Interface, The B-Sides and Alternative Energy for release in 2015. Bates’ many honors include a Charles Ives Scholarship and Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Guggenheim Fellowship, Jacob Druckman Memorial Prize from the Aspen Music Festival, ASCAP and BMI awards, a Fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center, Rome Prize, Berlin Prize and a two-year Composer Residency with Young Concert Artists. In 2012, he was awarded the Heinz Medal in Arts and Humanities. Mason Bates wrote of White Lies for Lomax, composed for solo piano in 2007 and two years later arranged for the California Symphony, where he was then Composer-in-Residence, “It is still a surprise to discover how few classical musicians are familiar with Alan Lomax, the ethnomusicologist who ventured into the American South (and elsewhere) to record the soul of a land. Those scratchy recordings captured everyone from Muddy Waters to a whole slew of anonymous blues musicians. “White Lies for Lomax dreams up wisps of distant blues fragments — more fiction than fact, since they are hardly honest recreations of the blues — and lets them slowly accumulate to an assertive climax. This short but dense homage (which began life as a solo piano work) ends with a Lomax field recording floating in from an off-stage radio, briefly crossing paths with the cloud-like remnants of the work’s opening. The seemingly recent phenomenon of sampling — grabbing a sound-bite from a song and incorporating it into something new — is in fact a high-tech version of the very old practice of allusion or parody, and the inclusion of a field recording of early blues musicians at the end is a nod to that tradition.” MAURICE RAVEL Born 7 March 1875 in Ciboure, Basses-Pyrénées, France; died 28 December 1937 in Paris Concerto in G major for Piano and Orchestra Jan. 23-25, 2015, page 2 PREMIERE OF WORK: Paris, 14 January 1932; Lamoureaux Orchestra; Maurice Ravel, conductor; Marguerite Long, soloist PSO PREMIERE: 14 January 1945; Syria Mosque; Vladimir Bakaleinikoff, conductor; Leonard Bernstein, soloist APPROXIMATE DURATION: 22 minutes INSTRUMENTATION: piccolo, flute, oboe, English horn, E-flat clarinet, B-flat clarinet, two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, percussion, harp and strings Ravel’s tour of the United States in 1928 was such a success that he began to plan for a second one as soon as he returned to France. With a view toward having a vehicle for himself as a pianist on the return visit, he started work on a concerto in 1929, perhaps encouraged by the good fortune that Stravinsky had enjoyed concertizing with his Concerto for Piano and Winds and Piano Capriccio earlier in the decade. However, many other projects pressed upon him, not the least of which was a commission from the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in the First World War, to compose a piano concerto for left hand alone, and the Concerto in G was not completed until 1931. The sparkling first movement of the Concerto in G opens with a bright melody in the piccolo that may derive from an old folk dance of the Basque region of southern France, where Ravel was born. There are several themes in this exposition: the lively opening group is balanced by another set that is more nostalgic and bluesy in character. The development section is an elaboration of the lively opening themes, ending with a brief cadenza in octaves as a link to the recapitulation. The lively themes are passed over quickly, but the nostalgic melodies are treated at some length. The jaunty vivacity of the beginning returns for a dazzling coda. When Ravel first showed the manuscript of the Adagio to Marguerite Long, the soloist at the premiere, she commented on the music’s effortless grace. The composer sighed, and told her that he had struggled to write the movement “bar by bar,” that it had cost him more anxiety than any of his other scores. The movement begins with a long-breathed melody for solo piano over a rocking accompaniment. The central section does not differ from the opening as much in melody as it does in texture — a gradual thickening occurs as the music proceeds. The texture then becomes again translucent, and the opening melody is heard on its return in the plaintive tones of the English horn. The finale is a whirling showpiece for soloist and orchestra that evokes the energetic world of jazz. Trombone slides, muted trumpet interjections, shrieking exclamations from the woodwinds abound. The episodes of the form tumble continuously one after another on their way to the abrupt conclusion of the work. RICHARD WAGNER Born 22 May 1813 in Leipzig; died 13 February 1883 in Venice “Good Friday Spell” from Parsifal (1877-1882) PREMIERE OF WORK: Bayreuth, Germany, 26 July 1882; Orchestra of the Festspielhaus; Hermann Levi, conductor PSO PREMIERE: 17 November 1899; Carnegie Music Hall; Victor Herbert, conductor APPROXIMATE DURATION: 12 minutes INSTRUMENTATION: three flutes, three oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion and strings In 1848, Wagner drafted the script for a drama titled “Jesus of Nazareth.” He seems never to have intended this scenario to serve as the basis of an opera (Wagner was always his own librettist), but it did contain scenes that he later used in Parsifal, most significantly the Good Friday Spell. Eight years later, he sketched another stage work, Die Sieger (“The Victors”) that reflected his interest in Buddhist thought and doctrine and also contributed to the final form of Parsifal, especially the idea of the “rebirth” of Kundry. It was not until after composing Das Rheingold, Die Walküre and much of Siegfried that this loose assembly of sketches, plans and ideas for Parsifal finally crystallized. In April 1857, after a cold, rainy spring, sunlight flooded the garden at Wagner’s villa near Zurich one morning and sent him into an Jan. 23-25, 2015, page 3 almost visionary state. He later wrote, “The garden was breaking into leaf, the birds were singing, and I could rejoice in the fruitful quiet I had so long thirsted for. Suddenly it came to me that this was Good Friday, and I remembered the great message it had once brought to me as I was reading Wolfram’s Parzival.... Its essence now became clear to me in overwhelming significance, and on the basis of the Good Friday idea I quickly conceived an entire drama in three acts of which I made a brief and hasty sketch.” However, Tristan und Isolde intervened (Wagner considered using Parsifal as a minor character in this opera, but abandoned the idea), and the next step in the creation of Parsifal was not taken until 1865, when Wagner presented a detailed outline of the libretto to his fanatical admirer, King Ludwig II of Bavaria. It was yet another dozen years — after Die Meistersinger, after Götterdämmerung — before the libretto of Parsifal took on its final form in 1877. The Prelude was composed in September, and Acts One and Two followed the next year. The entire short score was finished by April 4, 1879.